Electronic presentations should be e-mailed to q2008@istat.it by 20th June 2008.

The presentations must be in English.

Authors are expected to present their paper in person at the meeting, otherwise the conference organisers are to be informed.

Check the room where you present and be in the room 5 minutes before your session begins.

Each presentation should not exceed 15 minutes. Keeping time limit is crucial since delegates are allowed to move from one session to another.

Special topic sessions speaker guidance

Electronic presentations should be e-mailed to q2008@istat.it by 20th June 2008.

The presentations must be in English.

Authors are expected to present their paper in person at the meeting, otherwise the conference organisers are to be informed.

Special topic sessions may differ in timing from contributed paper sessions. Please contact your session organisers for the format of your session. Keep your presentation within the allotted time.

Check the room where you present and be in the room 5 minutes before your session begins.

Suggestions for your presentation

- Avoid reading out your paper.
- Focus your message on key points.
- Avoid presenting tables with many cells and difficult to be read.
- Present just a few important facts in each slide.
- If you want to distribute handouts, bring about 100 copies.
- Rehearse your oral presentation at least twice to be sure you stick on the allotted time.
- A signal by the chairs will inform you when you have 5 minutes and 1 minute left. Remember to watch the chair not to miss the signals.

Chair guidance

Session chairs are expected to foster discussion during sessions. Chairs are going to have the following tasks:

- Keeping the session to time.
- Giving short introduction on the speakers and the papers to be presented.
- Facilitating discussion by asking a number of pertinent questions for each of the papers, if necessary.
- Keeping the discussion brief and relevant.
- Writing a short note of 3 to 5 key points raised throughout the session to be collected by the room assistant at the end of the session.

Before the session:
- Be in the room 10 minutes before your session begins and introduce yourself to the speakers.
- Check speakers' names, titles and affiliations.

During the session:
- Start and end on time. You should grant timing and floor discussion.
- Remind speakers about their remaining time. You should signal to the presenter when 5 minutes and 1 minute are left.
- Hold each speaker to the allotted time.
- In contributed sessions, speakers are limited to 15 minutes of presentation time. Following the presentations, 15 or 30 minutes will be available for floor discussion, as scheduled.
- If you are chairing a Special Topic Session, please contact the session organizers to know the format.
- If a presenter ends early or does not attend, use that extra time for questions and remarks from the audience, the panel, or yourself. You should not make the following presentation start earlier than scheduled.
- In floor discussion ask participants to say their name, country, and institution and repeat the questions, to be sure that they are heard by all of the audience.